RESEARCHER: Cristina Gibson


This is a multi-year project, funded by the National Science Foundation. The general objective of this research is to create a framework for collaboration that incorporates the complex contextual conditions, improving the value-added for the collaborators, the degree of innovation, and the impact of the collaboration. Findings will expand theories of organizational structure and design, team effectiveness, and human resource development to better address contextual complexity. In doing so, the research contributes an explanatory model that will increase the effectiveness for multicultural and multifunctional global collaborations.

This research investigates emergent processes that are required to work effectively when workers rely on information technology, represent different cultures, are geographically dispersed, and lack a shared history of working together; when stakeholder requirements are ambiguous; when internal incentives for work are incongruent; when deadlines are urgent; and when the physical environment is in flux. Increasingly, these contextual conditions exist simultaneously, resulting in psychological, social, and organizational challenges that complicate work processes and call into question assumptions of traditional organizational models.

The focus of analysis to date has been on examining the capability of complex global collaborations to adjust to changes that occur in their environment. These relationships are being examined in the context of documentary film making teams -- collaborations which mirror those in many other industries because they lack permanence, have fluid membership, and environmental volatility. In a sample of 140 film collaborations rated by the film makers and 5000 film viewers, findings indicate that establishing external connections and using a cross-functional help enable external adjustment, while extremely high group efficacy (i.e., over confidence) hinders external adjustment. Importantly, the most effective films demonstrated only a moderate amount of adjustment -- over adjusting or under adjusting resulted in less effective films. These initial findings have practical implications for collaborators in dynamic environments.

Findings from this project are published in the following books: Organizational Dynamics, Handbook of Culture, Organizations and Work, The Organizational Behavior Reader, and Advances in Cultural Intelligence. The most recent empirical findings are under review with the Administrative Science Quarterly (ASQ).